Limit options in add form drop down

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1

I have a table for TASKS that relates to COMPANIES and PEOPLE . Open tasks are shown on a company detail page with the person linked as assignee. All good so far. Works a charm.

When I add a task I need to be able to pick an assignee. That assignee should only be from the current company. I expected to see a filter option on the select, but there is none. How are other people achieving this?

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2

Hi @hiyakker.

There is currently no built-in functionality to apply conditional logic to dropdown fields. This feature request is in our backlog and will become available in the future. In the meantime, I can suggest the following workaround.

If you use linked records for your dropdown buttons and limit the linked records based on the view in Airtable, Softr will display only the options available in the limited Airtable view.

You will need to:

  1. Create different views in Airtable for the original table used for the linked records and filter those views based on user groups.

    • For example, if you have Company 1 that should only see options 1 and 2, and Company 2 who should only see options 3 and 4, create one view for Company 1 and filter the data based on their user info. Then create another view for Company 2 and filter the data accordingly. Each view will display only the options related to the corresponding user.

  2. Create new linked fields for each view in the table where you want the end users to edit them.

  3. Create corresponding user groups in Softr (Company 1, Company 2, ets.) and set up blocks with Action buttons with corresponding visibility settings. This way, Company 1 will see only Action button 1 which is connected to the view where the data is already filtered.

As a result, when editing, each user group will be able to see only the options available to them in the limited view.

I hope this explanation makes sense and proves helpful.

3

Oh, wow. That’s quite an omission. Is this on the roadmap yet, it seems like essential functionality?

That workaround unfortunately makes softr rather redundant. If airtable needs to be used for day to day activities it undermines the whole value-prop or building out in softr.

Is there way to automate the airtable view creation maybe? This can’t be an uncommon need.

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4

Hi,

Any updates on this?

Im trying to create a marketplace with Softr, and something as obvious as allowing a customer to select a pre-saved shipping location cannot be done without this basic tool.

Thanks!

5

Hi @Cresc

I believe you will be able to accomplish this functionality now. We’ve recently released our new conditional forms which are very powerful, and in combination with our global data restrictions, you can ensure the users only see their data in their respective drop downs.

6

Hi,

Yes, I can do that, however it will automatically display the first column of Airtable, which in order to make them unique I must put IDs, and does not allow to show a different column from the same row.
For example, I want a customer to display “Home” or “Office”, however I would have to display the ID, which has no use for the user, over the name that the user gave to that location.

7

Hi @Cresc

Unfortunately I’m a bit lost here and don’t know what you’re referring too. From first glance, it seems like you may not be using it correctly. I’d suggest asking support (bottom right chat icon within app) as they can get into your app with you and help you further.

8

I believe what Cresc is trying to say is that in order to limit dropdown options to some users, we can not rely in the airtable dropdown field type, because it looks like softr cant handle how to limit this options with permissions.

So maybe he is trying to replace the dropdown options logic with a linked records table on airtable.

This maybe is bringing trouble, because the name of that linked records option table can only be accesed with the value of the first column table. And that column must have unique ids or names. (for his use case in particular) so maybe he is using record id to identify each record on the options table and now this appear problematic because who is going to memorize record ids to find an specific record.

I believe you can work a better naming for your first column on your options table, with a combination of the option ‘real name’, and a few characters from the record id value.

‘Office-GhRt’

9

Wow, thanks for breaking that down @acjnas !

10

I can see “Dropdown options filtering” on the road map, hopefully it will cover this.
In my use case I need to filter the dropdown options to whichever project a user is working on, so it would have to only show records that have matching ID fields to a details page’s record. You can add the conditions to the Linked Records field in Airtable, but the filter doesn’t transfer to the dropdown field in Softr like it does when you limit the dropdown options to an Airtable view. Creating a new view for each new project is not the way either of course.

11

Thanks, @sveta.ohanyan, for solving a problem that should not exist. I had to add three new linked fields, each with its own filtered view in AirTable, and then update all the Softr blocks that used the dropdown. It’s messy, but the user would never know, LOL. Most importantly, when the dropdown options are updated, the new options will flow to Softr without intervention.

@Softr, this post is a year or so old; I hope this feature is still on the roadmap, and I can one day clean up the workaround.

12

Hi @PYCAdmin

The workaround offered in this thread was a temporary solution. Back then, we didn’t have the feature available. However, that is no longer the case. You can now apply global data restriction rules to your app and limit the options in the dropdowns accordingly.

Please check the attached resources for more details on this functionality.